General Exam

Scott has three major hurdles in his Ph.D. program, the Qualifying Exam, the General Exam, and the Dissertation Defense. He did the Qualifying Exam right before Susanna was born and the General Exam on Thursday December 6. I am proud of him for the work he put in to this and the accomplishment it represents. I am also very glad to have him back.

Note: The image above is not related to his general exam; rather than posting some unpublished data on this blog I pulled this from the following previous publication (after all, it's all Greek to me): J. Scott Hale, Tamar E. Boursalian, Gail L. Turk, and Pamela J. Fink. "Thymic output in aged mice." PNAS, May 2006; 103: 8447 - 8452.

Happy Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving. I love that we have a day set aside to gather with loved ones to enjoy and be grateful for the great gifts of life, and I love that it comes so shortly before Christmas, a day that can so easily be swept away by to-do lists and strains and stresses of various sorts. When I take some time (ie, right now) to think about the many blessings I have in my life—my family and my faith forefront among those—I think it helps me refocus and recenter before entering the beautiful season of Christmas.

What do I have to be thankful for this year? For a devoted husband and a healthy daughter, for sisters-in-law (and their families) but three hours away who provide us a home away from home, for parents-in-law who drive 13 hours to make it even more like home, for the constant love and friendship of my own parents, for a cool glass of water whenever I want one, and just to be alive and part of this wonderful thing called life. I could list so many more things, but instead I’ll tell you about these photographs:

The top two are from a tea party Scott's mom arranged with the kids while we were on a bike ride. It was Susanna's first one. When we got back it was already underway, but I got to see her drink out of the little cup, pour milk on the table, and dip her cookie in the milk saying "bop bop," and then fall asleep (yes at the table, and no she did not end up taking a nap-- by the time I got the milk sodden cloths off her she was wide awake). The third is of me and Susanna with my niece Ellie and nephew Sam seeing Christmas lights at the Zoo. Susanna may look stoic in this photograph, but she spent most of the night saying "wow" and making that surprised face I tried to document here.

Nature Walk

Monday, November 19, 2007The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints encourages families to set aside time to be together on Monday evenings. We try to do this in our home and tonight our lesson was about nature as evidence of our Heavenly Father's love for us. So Susanna and I (Scott got home in the middle of it) went for a little walk to collect items of nature (we collected two leaves that had fallen on the sidewalk in front of our apartment). Because we live in Seattle it was already very dark at 6:00 when we headed out so I gave Susanna a headlamp and she looked so cute with it on that I had to snap a picture-- and now you get to see it too.

If you're curious about this Family Home Evening thing, click here for more information.

Halloween!

This year Susanna was a skunk for Halloween. It is an adorable costume except that without the hat she looks like a priest from the front. I have nothing against priests, but I that's definitely not what she was for Halloween (does dressing up your toddler as a priest seem wierd to anyone else?).

Above you'll also find a photograph of the pumpkin sign Susanna and I made. It is worth posting because it has Susanna's first scribbles on it; in the past when we've gotten out the crayons she has only wanted to eat them (admittadly, she was still trying to eat them quite a bit while we were working on the pumpkin).

There is also a Halloween family photograph from a little party we attended. Scott, as you can probably tell, was a robot. His costume was excellent-- he even won the "grand champion" award at the party for it. I, as you can probably not tell, was "The Grapes of Wrath." Earlier in the evening I had quite a few grapes attached to me, but they didn't last long. Scott was not the only person who won something at the party: I won the doughnut eating contest bringing home a little plastic aquarium with some tiny fish that grew to 400% of their original size. Is that something to be proud of?

To see photographs of last year's Halloween (there are no words; apparently I have become more verbose), click here.